Constructivist Propaganda Poster Tutorial

In the following tutorial David Oei and Carolyn Sullivan show us how they created their entry for the first round of the Crestock Photoshop Contest 2008 – a poster inspired by the Russian Constructivist movement

Immediately after we read the briefing for the project Carolyn and myself both thought of the Russian Constructivist movement as our creative jumping off point.

We refreshed ourselves with artists/designers Rodchenko and Lissitzky’s work but wanted to add some contemporary elements, such some retro Lichtenstein feel. We wanted to end up with a Constructivist inspired poster with sharp visual movement and an easy-to-understand message.

We started with the main elements of the poster, side-by-side pictures of Obama and McCain. To get a neo/retro Lichtenstein style we processed the images with a combination of filters and image adjustments.

10. We added a hand-made inner shadow and a stock image background design to give it a more gritty feel and also to add some depth to the poster. We multiplied each image on to the top of all of the layers.